With a new year fast approaching, the words of Edith Lovejoy-Pierce come to mind,
“We will open the book; Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”
We never know what opportunities will present themselves to us in the days and years ahead, although it has got me thinking about the opportunities that lie ahead for ESF.
One such opportunity for the company is our attendance at the world’s fair, Expo 2020, hosted by Dubai. The six-month long Expo, which opens on October 20th, is an innovation and partnership programme which funds, accelerates and promotes creative solutions that improves lives whilst preserving the planet.
One of the key themes at the 2020 Expo is Sustainability.
Using alternative as opposed to natural resources is hugely important in the sustainability of our planet and this is something that ESF is extremely passionate about. We designed and manufactured the award-winning Stellar Solar Smart Bench which utilises solar energy, without the need for any electricity, providing features that include WiFi and LED lighting, with the option to bespokely theme each bench for the individual client.
ESF has extensive and growing experience in the area of sustainability and the Expo presents a huge opportunity for us to showcase our innovative range of products, which includes the Stellar Bench and new life-saving Defibrillator pillar, designed and manufactured right here in Northern Ireland.
Our first experience of the Expo extraordinaire was at the 2015 Expo in Milan, which saw our street charge mobile phone charging units exposed to an astonishing 20 million-plus visitors. This was followed in 2017 by the Astana Expo in Kazakhstan where we supplied a number of our mobile street charge units, Smartflower charging units and Solaria solar benches for the duration, establishing some fantastic links and further large scale events throughout Europe as a result.
We’re excited about the opportunities that Expo 2020 will present to ESF and with a surge of recent work in UAE, we’re looking forward to revisiting projects like Global Village where we supplied a range of themed furniture, The Coca Cola Arena in Dubai, which was a £600k project supplying street furniture and the Al Montazah Water Park.
Before all that however, we finish writing the final chapter of this year’s book, thankful for the opportunities that we have been given and hopeful for the ones that are still to come.
